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Friday, December 29, 2017

If there's one last thing I write this year, it should be about the books I loved reading. These are our inspirations to tell more and fresher stories, and sometimes these are the only things that make us want to see tomorrow. True to my brand, most of these didn't come out in 2017. Some of the authors are actually dead. But I read them this year, and damn it, Kindred is incredible.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

This was the best year of my publishing career, and I couldn't be more grateful to all the editors who've worked me with throughout it. I've already lined up a few exciting things for next year and promise to keep working as hard as I can. Despite my syndrome and depression trying their hardest, this was the best year of my publishing career. I sold more stories to pro markets, and was solicited for non-fiction more times than any other year. One of my old stories was even adapted as an Audible short! As a kid clinging to audiobooks for dear life at thirteen, I never imagined that would happen.

So I've rounded up all my publications this year in a handy guide below. Please let me know if anything particularly touched you, and as always, thank you for reading.

Monday, December 4, 2017

Good news! I managed to sneak one more story into 2017. This is a short story about time loops plaguing a certain city bus, its driver, and its single passenger. It's one of my favorite things I've written all year, and hopefully will bring a little light to your December.

I want to thank Leigh Wallace and Cassandra Williams for beta reading this, and the staff at Flash Fiction Online for their warm reception. This is actually my fifth story at FFO. I never thought I'd show up there so often!

Thursday, November 16, 2017

I tire of people slagging this character. Superman is a dated concept, and yet one that's quite appealing with how
preposterously cynical our culture has gotten. I'm exhausted with all
the claims that there's nothing left to do with him except kill him. If hope is boring, then you're telling the story wrong.

This led to me joke around on Twitter last night about a Superman movie that wasn't so gloomy. Something truer to the vision of Superman a lot of us hold. Things got out of hand.

Monday, October 30, 2017

It's been fifteen months, but Netflix's most popular show is back. It sounds
like we may not get another season until 2019, so savor this while you can. If
you've watched the first season a dozen times, I recommend going into this one
with moderate expectations. The second season cannot match the surprises of the
first because we all love it now. Stranger Things 2 is more Stranger Things:
more creepy crawlies preying on the small town, more lore of the Upside Down,
and more character development for one of TV's most lovable ensembles. It's
another order of that fun meal you had last time.

The season puts its weakest foot forward, taking about four
episodes to really get in motion. It’s a hard contrast to the first season,
which in one episode set up everyone’s motivations and half of the major plot
threads. The difference is that now the Duffer Brothers know exactly how much
pop culture loves their kids, and so they don’t mind having them hang out,
slowly get into needless conflicts with each other, and lather up in 80s
references. The slower early episodes are thickly decorated in Punky Brewster
and “vintage” and KFC product placement.

In both seasons, Stranger Things is at its best when it uses
its influences quietly. The first season was highly influenced by Spielberg’s E.T.
and Stephen King’s Firestarter. It honored its influences by doing things like
the bicycle escape scene where Eleven used her powers to save them – flipping a
van rather than making the bicycles fly.

At its best, this season handles its influences in the same
way. One particular episode dives deeply into visual queues from Alien and
Aliens, but no one brings it up, and the outcomes are very different. In another plot thread, Dustin tries to adopt a
little monster of his own, promptly feeds it after midnight, and the synth-heavy
soundtrack echoes notes from the theme to Gremlins. These are homages embedded in
the plot without derailing it. It’s much defter, say, than when the kids scream
at a Dragon’s Lair arcade cabinet, or watch a vintage commercial for Oreos and The
Terminator.

Friday, October 27, 2017

After the shocking hit of Gerald’s Game, I had to watch
Netflix’s other big King adaptation. I am a huge King fan. A decade ago I began
limiting myself to reading one King book per year so I wouldn’t run out. Yet I
honestly don’t remember this novella from Full
Dark, No Stars. Even by the end of the movie, nothing shook loose.

It is certainly a King story. A loveless farm marriage threatens
to break up when the wife wants to sell a large chunk of the land that’s
legally hers. The husband (Thomas Jane) bides his time, then kills her and dumps
the body in a nearby well, covering his tracks and manipulating their son into
being an accomplice. The law wants to know where she was, and while the father
keeps them away, rats have started climbing out of the well and following him.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Sadako Vs. Kayako (2016)
If you were expecting reviews of two modern classics, I've got a surprise for you! This isn't contrasting the two films. It's a review of the much-overlooked movie in which their monsters actually fight. This is a real movie that really happened.

This is a campy and totally amusing crossover that’s almost
as perfect as Freddy Vs. Jason, and has very similar sensibilities. If you
enjoy the two franchises, it’s a blast to see people thrust through the paces
of both hauntings, trying to survive both having seen the haunted tape and
trespassed in the forbidden house.

Some people said Sadako (Samara in the U.S.) and Kayako
aren’t in much of the movie, but both show up early on, and neither franchise
has ever been about the two being lingering on-screen presences. They are slow
hauntings that lead towards huge catastrophes. What our heroes have to do is
cross the streams – to get both ghosts to follow them, and clash, in the hopes
to destroying each other and sparing the living.

Monday, October 23, 2017

This is the part of October where I defend Found Footage
movies. This is a niche of Horror that I continue to enjoy. Sometimes one is
truly awful (see: The Pyramid), but somewhere amid making the camera part of a
character, letting us see the environment in ways we otherwise couldn’t, and
the tease of where antagonism will come from, this approach to filmmaking gets
past my defenses in ways even excellent traditional film can’t. Googling
around, it seems Area 51 is universally reviled. But I had a surprisingly good
time.

Yup. It’s another case of John liking an unpopular Found
Footage flick!

Friday, October 20, 2017

These movies have been my first exposure to Italian Giallo, a
sub-genre that feels like an evolutionary link between Murder Mysteries and
Slasher Films. The Bird With The Crystal Plumage follows Sam Dalmas, an
American writer living abroad in Italy, who one night stumbles across an
attempted murder inside a museum. Although he’s trapped in the antechamber, he
manages to call the police, and then has to wait, just feet away from a woman he
can’t help further.

Shockingly, the victim survives passing out from her
injuries. More shockingly: she isn’t the only assault victim to live through
the movie. The Bird With The Crystal Plumage doesn’t view death like a contemporary
film. People survive reasonable injuries, and people like the writer are
haunted by what they see. Death isn’t easy to achieve, and it’s also too
weighty to shrug off. Sam can’t forget the horrible imagery, and spends the
rest of his time in Italy trying to track down the attacker where the police have
failed.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

This is a series I utterly missed out on in the 2000s
because I was stuck-up. How lazy was it to ditch a proper Slasher killer and
use an invisible hand of Death itself?

Not lazy at all, actually. The movie follows a teen whose vision of his flight
exploding causing him and a few friends to leave. The plane does explode, and
our teen becomes a suspect of the bombing. Meanwhile, the teens begin to die in
a series of ludicrously complicated coincidences. The first features a kid
slipping on water from a leaking toilet, falling into a bath tub where his neck
catches on wire, and spilling shampoo under his feet so he can’t stand up. It
quickly becomes apparent that Death itself is after the survivors, seeking to
fix what went awry in its plan.

It’s a fun idea that fits right into the classic Slasher
formula with one major change. Slashers historically thrive on either having a
killer with a strong personality, or on having the identity of the killer be a
mystery. Here instead we have a killer that is as absent as it is present, and one
that uses entirely unconventional.

A friend called it “Rube Goldberg’s Death Traps,” and that’s
apt, because the fun lies in trying to guess what things in a room are going to
wind up being dangerous. Is turning on the record player going to lead to her
demise? Is the electrical outlet going to short out at the right moment?

Monday, October 16, 2017

A family of Metal Heads move to a remote farm house and run
into the same demon that killed the previous tenants. It’s a demon that loves
the arts; it manipulated the love of music of the previous tenants’ son, and now
works its way into the new tenants’ father.

My favorite facet of the movie is that the Metal Heads
aren’t hard-drinking freaks; they’re misfits, sure, but they love each other,
drive a cheap station wagon, and screw up in relatable ways. As they move into
their idyllic little house, our soundtrack is screaming Metal. What they do is
make their aesthetic feel mundane and human. It’s delightful to see the music
culture applied to different life styles.

Metal Heads are people, too. And like all people, they
occasionally have to repel the assault of a serial killer who hears the same
voices as their father.

The movie ramps up well after they family sets down their
roots. The father, a painter of morbid art, starts feeling “the inspiration” –
but an inspiration all too close to what led the previous tenant to go
murderous. As the father paints disturbing scenes that even his family thinks
are weird, the old killer reappears, confused how anyone else could live there.
There’s high tension as both the killer and father stir up, like two kettles on
one stove, and you just hope for the sake of the family that they don’t both
boil over.

I’ve been harsh on most of the IFC releases that I’ve seen,
but between this and Apartment 143, I’m going to have to give their catalog
another look.

Friday, October 13, 2017

Julia Ducournau’s gift to us from French-Belgian cinema, a
riveting and intimate portrait of a vegetarian who has her first bite of meat
and suddenly can’t stop craving more. It’s an abrupt addiction, not a satire mocking
vegetarians, but a pathological Horror story about her descent.

Justine is just starting at a veterinary school with harsh
hazing rituals. Her bed is tossed out her window, and she has to crawl on her
knees through the courtyard, and her seniors force her to swallow a rabbit
kidney. Ever afterward she finds herself ravenous, and biting into meat on a shish
kabob makes her forget the rest of the world exists. Those cravings quickly
darken as she watches boys around campus. As a vegetarian, she argued human
life wasn’t any more sacred than that of animals. If anything, she’s
consistent.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

No movie in 2017 more understands what film doesn’t have to
do than It Comes at Night. It opens on a family putting down their terminally
ill grandfather and burning his body in the wilderness. We don’t know what his
disease is, but he is in awful shape and they are terrified of touching him.

Then we follow the family back to their boarded up house in
the woods, seemingly with no one else around. They only go outside in pairs.
They have strict protocols for locking and unlocking their doors. When a
stranger shows up at their house in the middle of the night, they treat it with
a terrified coolness, both clearly rattled that someone is out there, and
forcing themselves to focus.

Monday, October 9, 2017

That Steven Spielberg sure earned his career. This was the
movie that earned him Jaws, but rather than the tale of a shark, it’s one long
car chase that’s truly harrowing. A salesman is out trying to make a meeting in
another state when he tries to pass a slow moving truck; the truck responds by
pulling ahead of him, then slowing down again. It’s a moment of impatience and
tension a lot of us have driven through, but it begins a game of cat and mouse,
out in the middle of nowhere, where no one can help him.

Especially for a 1970s made-for-TV movie, Duel is masterful.
How do you keep such a simple film from getting visually boring? He films the
cars from all angles, and ___ gives a riveting performance as a man falling
behind the wheel. The use of music is sparing, often subtle, elevate the rumble
of engines and the wind of the wilderness. The movie always knows when to take
you in closer to our driver, or when to focus on the enigma of the truck. We
never see the man that’s chasing us. There’s only his titanic vehicle.

Friday, October 6, 2017

A serious step up from the first Annabelle, and a film that
generally feels closer to the universe of The Conjuring. This is a prequel
explaining the tragedy in a doll maker’s family that led to the creation of the
eponymous toy, and why it was possessed. After the loss of their daughter, the
family opens their house as an orphanage, and we follow Janice, a disabled girl
who keeps finding clues that something is amiss in their house.

One of the biggest differences between the first and
Creation is that so much more happens in this movie. Both the exploration of
the house and creepy events fill much more of the film, giving the kids and
their loyal nun attendant agency and investment. It also holds just enough
back, such as the creepy well in the back of the property, which merely has to
exist in the background of a few scenes and leave you waiting for something
awful to come out of it.

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

I was utterly unprepared for this movie. It was an amazing
get for Netflix, which scooped the film up from Cannes and recently released it
on its streaming service. It’s the sort of highly poignant thing we can’t get
enough of in Horror.

Milo is many things. A high school student. A son whose
mother died when he was young, and whose father is long gone. He’s a serial killer
who has no idea what to do with his compulsions.

Most of all, Milo is a fan of vampires. He thinks he is one,
and uses their sanguine lore to rationalize his impulses and how strange he feels.
He doesn’t fit in anywhere; his older brother offers no empathy, and he can’t
communicate with the gangs that dominate his block. Instead he hides in his
room, watching Nosferatu and Lost Boys. His notebooks are full of diagrams and lists
of lore, figuring out how different vampires worked, as he tries to figure out
why he is the way he is.

Monday, October 2, 2017

Surely you’ve heard
of Get Out by now. The movie about an African American dating a white girl, and
going to visit her parents in their creepy gated community? Where black people
have been disappearing, and later reappearing as meek community members without any memory of their
old identities?

If you didn’t know,
it’s good.

I was unfair to Get
Out at the cinema. I made the mistake of reading writer/director Jordan Peele’s
artist’s statements about how this movie would subvert tropes like why
protagonists never leave the house. Artist’s statements are dangerous, and the
movie doesn’t give compelling reasons for its hero to not get the hell out of
there.

But there’s no reason
to get hung up on details like that unless you’re holding a grudge against a
film’s creators, and Jordan Peele did a hell of a job on this movie. Even in
the theater, with my petty biases, I was utterly won over by the end of the
movie, which has one of the most satisfying series of reveals and knockdowns in
Horror history. It keeps unfolding all its mysteries and gives people some
necessary receipts.

Sunday, October 1, 2017

If you felt September was too quiet around the Bathroom Monologues, then good news! October is going to be noisy. We're watching scary movies.

Like last year, I'm going to wring every last drop out of October. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and one of the best parts is watching the best in Horror. I'll be coming in at least twice a week with fresh reviews of recent and classic films. Hitchcock and Spielberg? You bet. But also Netflix's latest offerings, indie hits, and my first taste of the Italian Giallo genre.

Here's a loose idea of the posting schedule. Let me know what you think.

OCTOBER 2 Get Out, Gerald’s Game
OCTOBER 4 The Transfiguration, A Dark Song
OCTOBER 6 Annabelle: Creation, Cult of Chucky
OCTOBER 9 Duel, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Frenzy
OCTOBER 11 The Autopsy of Jane Doe, It Comes at Night
OCTOBER 13 Raw, The Void
OCTOBER 16 Devil’s Candy, Disappointments Room, Lake Mungo
OCTOBER 18 Final Destination, Death Note
OCTOBER 20 The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Bay of Blood, Blood and Black Lace
OCTOBER 23 Area 51, Dog Soldiers
OCTOBER 25 Sadako Vs. Kayako (The Ring Vs. The Grudge), Hell House LLC
OCTOBER 27 Creep 2, 1920
OCTOBER 30 Stranger Things Season 2

Naturally I'm ending the month with the return of my favorite Netflix show. But it all starts tomorrow with two of the best-reviewed scary flicks of the year: Get Out and Gerald's Game.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

It follows Juniper and Miguel, two engineering prodigies who dream of being the first people to set foot in a parallel universe. The two were so alike they were almost destined to fall for each other. When they finally open that portal, they find another Juniper and Miguel, who've been working on the same project. The Junipers accidentally switch, and are stranded in alternate realities. But this isn't a bizarre land where the dinosaurs still roam over the North lost the Civil War. Our nearest neighboring universes are nearly identical to our own, just one probability variation away. So Juniper is stranded on earth just like hers, with a life that's nearly identical, trying to get back to her Miguel, and trying to ignore the identical man working beside her.

The reactions have been amazing. Thanks to everyone who's already read and shared this story. It's something I've wanted to write since I was 15.

Thanks as well to the small army of alpha, beta, and final readers who joined me in Juniper's journey. Thank you to A.T. Greenblatt, Cassie Williams, Janice Smith, Phil Margolies, David Twiddy, Laurence Brothers, and Katherine Hajer.

And thanks to Daily Science Fiction for publishing me for the third time. I do so enjoy being in their digital pages.

Monday, September 4, 2017

Happy birthday to people who were born on the same day as myself! Today I'm celebrating by playing the RAQ: the Rarely Asked Questions. Everything here was submitted by people who swear they've never asked these to anyone else before. I will do my best to give them an adequate first answer. Feel free to judge my adequacy in the Comments.

Mris asked,
"What is your favorite kind of roof?"

I like the Heroic Shingle package myself. The shingles seem
sturdy enough for people to run across, but in case of antagonism, slide
conveniently to a steep fall. This would be unappealing if it ever killed a
noble soul, but such souls always catch the lip of the roof or a ladder,
whereas villains fall to serious spinal injury. It’s a fine trope and it keeps
your attic dry.

Mary Garber asked,
"Which Firefly character would you want reincarnated into your pet cat?
The one who would be watching you sleeping?"

Recognizing that I have a highly dangerous allergy to cats,
I doubt I’ll be spending more than one night in the same room as any of the
Firefly reincarnates. But Alan Tudyk is a very versatile actor, so I think he’d
do the most dynamic job playing the animal whose dander kills me. Hopefully he gets
nominated for some award over it.

Thursday, August 31, 2017

I'll miss you, Summer 2017! Fun as it was to see people at so many cons, it's nice to have the weather cool down and be able to stay home for a while. While I can't tell you some of the projects I'm working on yet, I am happy to share some of my favorite free reads from over the last two months. As always, everything here is free to read. Just click the link. If you like what you read, please consider donating to the author's Patreon, or subscribing to the related magazine. So many places are struggling to get it done right now.

Fiction

"Skills To Keep the Devil In His Place" by Lia Swope Mitchell at Shimmer Magazine
-This is somewhere between a possession story and Slipstream. Slipstream usually bends towards the Fantastic, so seeing it wax toward Horror intrigues. Here a girl is going through the typical pains of adolescence - how to bond with people while protecting her psyche, conflict with a mother who seems alternately ambivalent and overbearing. But at the same time, she feels like the Devil himself is sometimes in her eyes, or sitting in her lap, sometimes in disgustingly vivid detail. The story teases us with how this sort of possession will overlap with the person she's turning into simply as a teenager, and whether she'll do right by anyone in her life - her mother, her BFF, or even Satan. The most poignant part is when she's so horrendously bullied at school that the strange demon slithering out from under her bed at night feels like a viable companion. Possession stories don't examine human isolation often enough, but Mitchell gets it.

"Never Yawn Under a Banyan Tree" by Nibetida Sen at Anathema Magazine
-A literally and figuratively spirited story! Dating advice is usually awkward, but especially when it comes from a ghost you accidentally swallowed. Our interloper here is a pret, which fell from a banyan tree and into our narrator's gullet. The pret thinks our narrator could do better than her current romantic prospects, and kicks off a delightful series of events that I don't want to spoil. But I've re-read this story three times over August, just to smile to at certain bits.

But I also have two two story sales to share with you. I'm so excited for both of these to go out into the world.

The first is "The First Stop is Always The Last." This is a Groundhog's Day-like time loop story, following a bus driver who can't seem to make it to the second stop on her route. It might have to do with her single eccentric passenger. This story sold to Flash Fiction Online, and will be my fifth (?!) story in their magazine.

Many thanks to my beta readers on this one: Leigh Wallace, Ariel Harris, and Cassie Williams. It's another stretch for me, expanding what I can do with my fiction, though I don't want to spoil how just yet!

The second story is simply titled "Tank!" This one was the result of joking around with Max Gladstone at 4th Street about how tough it would be for a tank to attend a convention. So, it's literally about the exploits of a sapient tank that just wants to make some friends at Comic Con. Being about a tank, there's a surprising amount of my own lived experience at cons in this story.

Thanks to my beta readers on this one: Alison Wilgus, Paul Starr, Samari Smith, Max Gladstone, Merc Rustad, Leigh Wallace (hi again!), and Cassie Williams (hi again, Part II!). "Tank!" is expected over at Diabolical Plots in June of 2018. It's funny to already have a story set for next summer!

Monday, August 21, 2017

I can't believe it's been five years since I asked people to look at my RAQ. This was an annual highlight of the Bathroom Monologues calendar, and I'm resurrecting it in 2017.

What is the RAQ, you ask?

Well my birthday is September 4th. Up until Friday, September 1st, I'm asking you to ask me questions that you've never asked anyone else. These are the Rarely Asked Questions.

Examples include:

-What is the vapor point of extra virgin olive oil?

-If an 80's cartoon villain had to be your aunt, who would you pick?

-If he wants to avoid the conductor and skip the fare, what is the best time for a Mummy to hop the Baltimore light rail?

You can ask as many questions as you like, as long as they're unique.
What you don't normally ask anyone else is entirely up to you. Please
leave your mysteries and queries in the Comments section of this post.

I'll compile every question and answer at least one per person on September 4th - my birthday. That's how I like to celebrate.

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Friends! How's your summer going? Because mine's been a heck of a ride.

In the last week I've had two very different things published in venues I adore. I'd like to share them with you before August carries us all off to parts unknown.

First up is "A Silhouette Against Armageddon," my latest flash to be published at Fireside Magazine. This is my third piece they've published, and I'm quite flattered. The story follows a man who's afraid someone is breaking into his coffin. Why he's woken up in his coffin in the first place is a matter of some consternation.

I honestly think it's one of my best pieces of fiction to date, and it would've been a highlight of the Bathroom Monologues run. As proud as I am of it, I was still surprised by how many people have been sharing it around the internet. I've never been tagged in so many personal messages on social media like this. If you've already read and shared it, thank you. You brightened a dark week for me.

The second piece is an essay that was a long time coming. Uncanny Magazine is running a Kickstarter to fund Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, a special issue written and edited entirely by disabled writers. It's picking where Lightspeed's Destroy issues left off, and it's something long overdue in the field. I'm happy to have contributed a personal essay to the drive.

My essay is "BFFs in the Apocalypse" (I still can't believe they let me use that title), about the paucity of friendships between disabled characters in fiction. Usually we're a token member of a group of otherwise non-disabled protagonists. That's one reason why The Stand is so significant to me - its friendship between Nick and Tom is precious and should be the start of much more in our literature.

Saturday, July 1, 2017

The blitz of Spring turning into Summer is almost over. I just have one convention left - Readercon, ironically the only place I won't be doing panels or hosting. As much as I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, I'm equally anticipating all the sleep I get to catch up on afterward. Plus Spoonbenders and Little Witch Academia are calling my name.

Over June, I read some brilliant short fiction and rattling non-fiction. It's a great way to keep the mind sharp in a bunch of airports. As always, everything linked here is free to read in full. Simply click the link in the title of each piece and away you'll go.

Fiction

"Small Changes Over Long Periods in Time" by K.M. Szpara at Uncanny Magazine
-"My attacker holds me like he did on the dance floor" is one of those lines that tightens your guts. Immediately after learning that our narrator was once attacked and turned into a vampire in an alley, we learn it was by their date. The story uses the tropes of vampire fiction to take us through the criminally less-exposed trans experience, including our narrator getting socked by the politics of the Federal Vampire Commission for having an "atypical body." It all builds up to an absolutely beautiful final exchange with their attacker, in which metaphor and power structures get grabbed by the neck.

"The Existentialist Men" by Gwendolyn Clare at Diabolical Plots
-Come for the play on comic book titles, stay for a sweet profiles of people with odd powers (or equally odd absences of powers). Clare swiftly gives you a sense of the community between the people, even if their powers made it difficult for them to always coexist. My favorite is the shortest entry: "Julie could disappear, but only once. We all miss Julie."

"Water Like Air" by Lora Gray at Flash Fiction Online
-Tom Hatcher doesn't believe in ghosts, but something stranger than the average haunting comes dripping to his doorstep. The story opens with Elodia, a mysterious woman, being covered in slime and heaving her way out of the lake. It's all part of her coming home - to Tom. This is one of those creeping flash fictions that only gives you full context after you've gotten goosebumps. The flood inside Tom is calling to her.

The essay probes into dangerous messages about disability inside 10 Cloverfield Lane and Don't Breathe, and the disgusting ableism both inside the Trump campaign and in attacks against him. Horror and Politics love to compete with each other. Together, they formed a cogent view of disabled people that needs to be dissected, but is only appreciable together. Ableism is always about larger context.

Special thanks to A.T. Greenblatt and Cassie Williams for test reading this, and to Elsa Sjunneson-Henry and Brian White for providing editorial. Fireside's staff has been nothing but thoughtful throughout the process. It's been a privilege to work with them.

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

May kicked off my busy summer, as I finished a novel and visited the Nebula Awards for the first time. This travel is wiping me out, but it's a pleasure to see so many people on the road. Editing has severely eaten my reading time, but I still have some flash, short stories, and non-fiction that I positively have to share.

As always, everything linked here is free to read with no paywall. Just click the title of any piece that interests you. If you like what you read, please consider subscribing to the zine or the author's Patreon.

As never before, there's also this fish. The fish make more sense later.

Fiction"Carbon Dating" by Effie Seiberg and Spencer Ellsworth at Galaxy's Edge
-No focus group could have honed a story more precisely for me. The Internet becomes self-aware, searches itself to decide it must become happy, and then goes about trying to find true love. But dating sites aren't so wieldy for the incorporeal lovers of this world, and love isn't so rational thing. Thusly, The Internet winds up in love with a mountain has a comely array of glaciers. It is, as our authors put it, "a rocky relationship." It's whimsical, weird, and unlike anything else I've read this year. It makes an off appeal to anthropomorphism, because our internet might well become self-aware (or sprout several self-awarenesses), making this not quite implausible - just that it's an unusual idea for the direction self-awareness might take it. Really, it's among the nicer directions such an event could go.

They've given it a full podcast adaptation, with a soundtrack and narration by Marguerite Kenner. The proprietor of the podcast network, Alasdair Stuart, also gave me a generous introduction, and an insightful response to the story as an outro. I couldn't be more delighted.

I have to thank my beta readers who have looked at this story of the years since I first had the idea: Samari Smith, Jemma Mayer, Cassie Willaims, Nat Sylva, and Randall Nichols. This story would not be readable without them.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

We're going into convention season, and I keep meeting new writers who are nervous about making bad impressions. Especially early on, you dread that anything you do will kill your career. In order to make some anonymous writers feel a little better, I want to share a story that I wish wasn't true.

My greatest convention shame began with a great short story.
It was nominated for an award at this con I was attending, and was one of the
funniest Science Fiction shorts I'd ever read. It was vicious, sometimes repulsive,
using impossible plots for hilarious ends. It was so funny that I got up in the
middle of it to annoy friends by reading random passages aloud.

As I spread glowing reviews across social media, I
discovered something: most reviewers hated this story.

Many of the reviewers were attracted just because it was
nominated for this Prestigious Award; they argued that it was too morbid, too
awful, or not even a story. After a while, I felt the author was being wronged.
Dear reader, I argued on the internet.

Friday, May 12, 2017

I'm pleased to be a guest this month at Almost An Author, a site designed to help new writers shape their careers. Kathryn Johnson had me over there to discuss writing with disability, the writing life, and my peculiar health. If you ever wanted a glimpse at just what a diagnostic weirdo I am, the first question will fill you right up.

It's been a while since I've been interviewed in long form like this. It was a lot of fun - I think I laughed more than the average subject. Kathryn was also very considerate and made the chat fun. You can read the entire text here.

Monday, May 1, 2017

I am so unprepared for May. Are you unprepared for May? Well let's make it a little easier with some quality fiction and journalism. As with every time I gather my favorite reads, everything listed here is free to read. The link to read is in the title of each piece. April was an unusually good month for humorous and quirky fiction, which got me through some rough times. Let's have a look!

Fiction"Attending Your Own Funeral: An Etiquette Guide" by Erica L. Satifka at Daily Science Fiction
-Quirky, morbid, and with just enough heart, this story gets you ready to see your own funeral, in the next universe over. The other attendees? All parallel universe versions of the same lady, naturally, who compare notes on their successes and tragedies. Who stole technology, who destroyed the atmosphere, and what the heck they were after in the first place. Satifka packs so many neat ideas into a tight package.

"Running safety tips for humans" by Marissa Lingen at Nature Magazine
-Science Fiction often examines alien invasions. But did the last one figure out how our alien overlords will ruin jogging? This is a delightful piece of list fiction, breaking down the hazards of a possibly human-eating species that's babysitting our planet, and how to stay fit while they're in control.

Monday, April 3, 2017

I'm honored to have a a story in this month's Flash Fiction Online. "The Terrible"

This is an honor. Not many writers have been published four times in this magazine. FFO was my first pro-sale, and has continued to be a home for diverse authors and wildly diverse stories. It's a privilege to have contributed a few tales to their catalog.

"The Terrible," which originally ran at DSF, is a Superhero Comedy. Actually, a Supervillain Comedy. It follows The Terrible, self-proclaimed arch-nemesis of the world's most powerful woman. He's come so close to killing her dozens of times, and tonight he has the perfect plan. But something's wrong. It's almost like her heart isn't in it...

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

It's been my busiest March in a while! A couple of brutal health episodes couldn't stop the train of goodness. In fact, I managed to step up my regular exercise from 2.0 miles on the elliptical to 2.5, thanks partially to being mesmerized by Westworld. But the good news isn't just miles, or reading A Brief History of Seven Killings (and incredible achievement of a novel) and seeing Kong: Skull Island (a far better kaiju movie than I'd expected). In fact, I have so much good news that I have to relay it in list form.

1. The good news started rolling in with an acceptance from Pseudopod! One of the internet's premiere Horror podcasts will be dedicating an entire episode to my short story, "Under the Rubble." It follows two survivors of an earthquake, trapped under the remains of a convenience store, trying to stay sane and alive until rescue can come. If it's coming at all.

2. And then Flash Fiction Online bought a reprint of my superhero story, "The Terrible!" It originally ran at DSF, but is more timely now with the Wonder Woman movie coming out. It's about a villain who learns he was never actually a threat, and his heroine has been patronizing him for years in the hope he'll get over this "evil" phase. This will mark my fourth April Fools humor story at Flash Fiction Online. I couldn't ask for a better home for short humor.

3. Flash Fiction Online also published their Science Fiction 2016 Anthology, and the opening story is my "Foreign Tongues." It's one of my personal favorite flashes, about an alien that communicates by taste rather than sight or sound, and thinks ice cream is the dominant form of life on earth. They have more trouble "talking" to us, but they won't give up easily, no matter how many humans they have to ingest. The anthology is live right now.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

This is a few days late, isn't it? I had to postpone a little for my Mock Oscars, covering Logan, and a certain wonderful event in my family. I'll share that last good news with you in my next post, but for now, I want to share some amazing stories and journalism. It includes not one, but two Science Fictional stories of birds that just happen to be true.

As always, everything listed here is free to read with no paywall. I've linked directly to each piece. If you like what you read, consider grabbing a subscription to the publisher or dropping money into an author's Patreon.

Such a thoroughly charming story from its first chatter between a frog and a mighty god about all the weird things the local atheists believe. There's quirky personality to its very eschatology, bouncing between personal lives and grand stakes. It's a chatty story, but the dialogue makes lightness of such heavy matters, and gives the motion of the story life, all the way to crystallizing its conclusion. There's wisdom here.

Sunday, March 5, 2017

Logan is to Wolverine what Deadpool is to Deadpool, significantly more faithful to the character than anything before it. Is it the best X-Men film? It’s weighty, weary, knee-deep in sacrifices, with fights so visceral I jerked my head along with the punches. It has little of the optimism you find in mainline X-Men films, in favor of a bleak Western-tinged story in which Wolverine tries to do the right thing one last time in his life. It is a beautiful send-off for Hugh Jackman, whose portrayal has been every bit as iconic as Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man.

Monday, February 27, 2017

It's almost March 2017, so of course we're all talking about
the best movies of 2016. Personally, I'm most bummed that I missed out on The Handmaiden and Fences due to being too busy and ill to see them for their brief runs around here. For the Oscars, naturally I disagree
with some of the winners. More naturally, I don't understand what some of the
categories mean. But nothing shall dissuade me from telling a sizable
democratic body of people who devote swaths of their lives to film that their
mass conclusions were wrong. Here we go.

The Dark Horse Award

Going to the movie that was way better
than you all led me to believe it would be

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Since I couldn't sleep thanks to syndrome pain, I tried out Amazon's new show Patriot. It felt worth a shot given warm reviews and an amazing cast, including Terry O'Quinn and the guy who plays Death on Supernatural. Why not try an offbeat espionage comedy?

The second episode goes on a weird spree of abusing disabled characters are least four separate times. The Asian math whiz who suffered brain damage in a car accident returns... only to be talked down to by everyone, and as soon as he shows his aptitude at math is still there, his competitor shuts his laptop and leaves him helpless. The protagonist steals the prosthetic legs of amputees which pays off in one of them being a security guard who has to chase him later, hopping along ineffectually.

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

This round-up has been on hiatus over a few particularly chaotic months, but is back for 2017. A few old stories and articles popped up in here because I was reading voraciously over that period - I just was encumbered by workload, a novel, and family events and illnesses. This month the round-up comes in three flavors: Short Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Non-Fiction Related to a Certain Odious Fool.

Short Fiction"Ndakusuwa" by Blaize M. Kaye at Fantastic Stories of the Imagination
Pour one out for Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, which is closing its doors. It paid more than double the professional average for short fiction, and steadily gathered interesting voices and great reprints. As I've gone through my back catalog, this one stuck with me. It's a flash fiction biography of a genius, from the first time she disassembled a clock, to all of the times she left her parents, always for further and less imaginable shores. Perfect poignancy.

"Mamihlapinatapei" by Rachael K. Jones at Flash Fiction Online
Another day, another title that's tricky on the tongue. You'll have to read to the end to learn the meaning of the title, and it's a joyous revelation. The line "For these children, there has never been a world without dinosaurs" gave me such a smile. It's exactly the sort of thing I crave people to speculate in our worlds of speculative fiction. This flash is saturated worldbuilding about coexistence and what it means to have to switch cultures and languages. Jones is, as always, really good at writing characters switching.

"Monster Girls Don't Cry" by Merc Rustad at Uncanny Magazine
My writing naturally lends itself to long scenes, which leaves me fascinated by writers like Walton and Zelazny, who are so comfortable with compact scenes. Rustad's story is a case study in how to do extremely quick cuts in prose, with some scenes lasting only a paragraph, but still being poignant. This takes such advantage of the short fiction form to build to some wonderful emotions.

"The Psittaculturist's Lesson" by Marissa Lingen at Daily Science Fiction
A cracking story of an assassination attempt on an empress whose magic and guards have stopped every avenue so far. More than their, she surrounds herself with parrots, and it's in teaching them language that the twist comes.

"My Grandmother's Bones" by S.L. Huang at Daily Science Fiction
When an editor asked for some good flash for a possible anthology, this was one of the first recommendations I emailed to him. This tab stayed open for a couple months because I relished in revisiting Huang's meditation on an adoration that existed in orbit with love and respect. It's a beautiful and concise view of a relationship.

"In Memoriam: Lady Fantastic" by Lauren M. Roy at Fireside Magazine
It opens complaining about a sexist obituary for one of the world's first superheroes, and it rolls on with rich personality from there. It's a great intersection in poking at superhero culture and at how we treat women, blended perfectly. The account of a fictional superhero life colors in how the narrator grew up, through the Halloween she dressed as Lady Fantastic, and her impacts later in life. Remarkably sweet.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Heads up, everybody: your marching is bothering the Republicans. Better cut it out. You know what special snowflakes they are.

Did the people of Boston misbehave in 1773? Did people challenge Jim
Crow Laws? Did people refuse to honor Joe McCarthy just because he was
evil?

No. They were polite and refused to challenge the status quo. Quit being so unamerican and stop exercising free speech.

Also, go sit where Republicans want you to sit, because apparently
skipping an inauguration is on the same no-no list as Peacefully
Marching, Putting Your Hands Up, and Kneeling During the National
Anthem.